The Meat Mafia Podcast is hosted by @MeatMafiaBrett and @MeatMafiaHarry.
We're two guys who walked away from the typical path to carve out something different. Based in Austin, we’re on a mission to figure out what it takes to live a fulfilled life in a world that often pushes us away from meaning.
We have conversations with people we believe can help us, diving deep into the pillars of health, wealth, and faith, as the cornerstones of our mission.
Whether it's challenging the modern food system, questioning conventional health advice, or building something from the ground up, we're here to explore the tough questions and share the lessons we’ve learned along the way.
If you're tired of the noise and ready to find meaning, tune in and join us!
Welcome back to another episode of the Meat Mafia podcast. On today's episode, we had on a true maverick in the health and wellness space. He has been battling for decades for the fight for real foods and food sovereignty. He is a huge proponent of food is medicine, and he is a pioneer in the space of real foods. This is Mark McAfee, the owner of Raw Farms in California.
Speaker 1:And his company makes a number of different raw dairy products, including raw milk, raw kefir, raw cheeses. And he really is doing an incredible job, incredible work. And now his main mission is to educate on the topic of raw milk. We were honored to have him on the show. This is a virtual episode, kind of a throwback and homage, if you will, to some of our older episodes.
Speaker 1:So we truly enjoyed this one. We are so excited to share this one with you. But before we get going, we would just like to give a quick shout out to one of our partners of the show who who's just doing an amazing job in the health space. This is, CrowdHealth. CrowdHealth is really pioneering a new vision for what health coverage can look like.
Speaker 1:And most people are accustomed to health insurance. But once you kind of think outside of the box everyone everyone knows health insurance is a struggle. It costs a lot. It you never get covered for the things that you really need. When you really, really need it, it's challenging to get covered.
Speaker 1:And then, you know, you're left paying more and more, just because you're beholden to the health insurance company. So crowd health is an alternative to that. It is a crowdfunding alternative where you join a community, like crowd health or one of their sub communities, like the carnivore crowd or the Bitcoin crowd. And your community is, effectively, your health insurance policy where you go and you submit all of your bills. You pay in cash and get potentially a 40 to 60% reduction in in your bills because you're settling in cash.
Speaker 1:And then those bills are paid for by your community. It is such a cool and incredible model. I truly believe in this. Brett and I truly believe in this and have been using it for the past year and a half. And, love the founder, Andy.
Speaker 1:We've had him on the show before. So go check them out. I think you guys will truly, enjoy the the platform. And if you're not aware of them, please go do your research on them. They are amazing.
Speaker 1:Alright. Now it's time for the show with Mark McAfee. Mark, welcome to the Meat Mafia podcast. This is, an absolute pleasure to have you on the show. Long time coming, so really appreciate you joining us today.
Speaker 2:Excellent. Excellent. Glad to be here.
Speaker 3:We're excited. I was saying, before we hit record, this is a special podcast for both of us because I think for many people, that don't know you, you are the founder of Raw Farm, which is the world's largest, organic raw dairy farm in the world. And when I was living in San Diego and Harry would come out to visit me, we were starting to hear a lot more about raw milk. We both experimented with the carnivore diet. We had a lot of success with it.
Speaker 3:But as you know, milk is a very polarizing topic. So a lot of people that are pushing you to go carnivore, they're telling you to get off of dairy products. And the more research we were doing, we were hearing that raw forms of dairy are some of the most bioactive nutrient dense foods you could possibly be eating, but we didn't know where to get it. And luckily, in California, you're able to get your product in sprouts, in Erewhon, and a couple of the local grocery stores out there. So we actually dread your product was the 1st raw milk product that we've ever consumed, and we've never looked back since.
Speaker 3:So number 1, we just wanted to thank you for doing the work that you're doing, and we're just so excited to dig into everything with you today because it's such an important topic.
Speaker 2:It's been a life's purpose and passion of mine for the last 25 years, so thank you for that. There's a lot of story behind why we're so passionate and driven to do this when the forces are so heavy against us. But, I've often said, you know, they may have the guns and the money, but I've got the truth of the mom. So there you go.
Speaker 1:Before we get into it, I I just need to get this off my mind. I'm literally dreaming about one of the products that you guys have. The I think it's a kefir with Oh my god. It's so good.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's insane. It's really good. New added sugar. It's just got some various different, herbs in in it, you know, and it's just fermented raw milk.
Speaker 2:It's fermented, you know, with, 12 additional bacteria on top of the hundreds of random bacteria that are always occurring in raw milk. And they're taken to literally kind of, you know, what is it? 40,000,000 bacteria per milliliter, and everyone's different because the way it's fermented. So it's truly rewilding your gut, which is the diversity needed to build a new system, which is fantastic, and the food to feed it.
Speaker 3:Yeah. That's we're gonna we're gonna dig into it all, and it's you know, you don't know this, Mark. So we're we live in Austin, Texas now. We both went to college together. We played college baseball together up in Boston.
Speaker 3:So before we launched the brand, which we really feel is our life's work, I was living in New York City working a job. Harry was in Boston in corporate America as well. And it's fascinating that you go to these northeast cities and probably even some some more left leaning cities in California as well. When you go to a coffee shop, the baristas literally say, do you want cow's milk or plant based milk? And there are so many millennials and people in general that are drinking plant based milk thinking it's healthier, not realizing that conventional almond milk, oat milk, etcetera.
Speaker 3:It's like 15 chemical ingredients, seed oils, rapeseed oil, etcetera, versus, like, drinking a product that's actually created by God. So I'm just curious just to start things off. What is your, like, reaction to that when you see this world of, do you want cow's milk or plant milk?
Speaker 2:I wrote a interesting little multi page, story. Oh, it's been 15, 17 years ago. It said all of the things the pasteurization has killed. And it was, like, 12 things. It was it was really amazing.
Speaker 2:Now I I've come up with a couple more things, but one of them was, the delicious flavor taste and the drive for milk was one of the things that passed was Asian because it's so allergenic. So hard to do excusing filth and to quote doctor Bruce Sherman, the pasteurization is an 18th century solution with 8th century problem. We can do so much better. So by putting in all these rules and regulations, at least literally excuse filthy milk in the 1800 and made that the standard of identity for milk. People don't appreciate a a flavorless or bad tasting, allergenic, hard to digest food, and and are rejecting it.
Speaker 2:So raw milk was not available as a as a supplement or as a for that. So what would they do? They're doing everything but milk because they all be emerging, new products, soy milk, almond milk, macadamia milk. I mean, every kind of milk you can imagine, which basically trying to lubricate your cereal. K.
Speaker 2:And they missed the real thing, which is raw milk. And so when you've got 10 or 15 years of people, 20 years maybe pushing pushing into this alternatives of milk thing, finding that it is filled with all this crap that you'd never wanna put your body built in the lab. And then you recognize that that doesn't do any for me either. Just associate with all kinds of issues and problems. It doesn't taste very good.
Speaker 2:And you discover raw milk that's low risk per se, delicious, fantastic, delivered to the store quickly. You people start meet immediately going, woah. This is fantastic. And they move on and be beyond the milk alternatives, which you were forced to go to because pastorization was such a a bad choice. And I think that's what's going on.
Speaker 2:That's my my kind of my initial response. Remember that the milk alternatives do not have the thousands of bioactives found in raw milk. Those bioactives are put there by mother nature's blueprint and God himself through a 1000000 years of evolution to make sure that a baby thrived thrived at its weakest point in life at birth. When it didn't have an immune system, raw colostrum, then raw milk built 1 in the microbiome of the gut, which allowed it to deal with viruses and bacteria and build the biodiversity of of, you know, of all the biodiversity in the gut. And then the antibodies, all the wonderful diversity of antibodies to be able to protect themselves against all the onslaughts.
Speaker 2:It's so breastfeeding is raw milk. Right? And what's interesting about that is breast milk is raw milk from mammal and it's uncontested as the perfect food by the FDA, USDA, World Health Organization, all the physicians organization, everybody that's anybody says breastfeed your baby's plate, please, because all these fantastic benefit. But if you know from breast milk, the cows, goats, sheep, horses, reindeer, or camels, they freak out. And that's the paradigm here is we can do a good job of producing steady promol.
Speaker 2:Doctor Henry Coit did it in t 93. He said just clean up the milk and test it. And you have it come from cows and pastures. They have it come from places that have clean water. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Now the countryside. But in 1893 also, you know, Nathan Strauss running the parboiler from, from from France to cook the hell out of the mouth because the filthy sources of milk in the downtown city brewery dairies was filled with tight weight and all kinds of crap was killing the 50% of the people that drank it. So you had kind of diversion of the past in 18 90s 3. And we are the manifest destiny of doctor Henry White's work from the 18 nineties that had been going back down back for 15,000 years before that. So, this is really, really I think when people say, oh, raw milk's a fad.
Speaker 2:No. 15,000 year fad and I love it. No problem.
Speaker 1:Can you talk a little bit more about like, just starting from the top, like, pasteurization versus raw milk? When did we have to start making that distinction? Because at at a certain point, raw milk just used to be every like, like you said, their work reading on technology to pasteurize milk. We hadn't thought about it because it wasn't a problem. So when did we have to start making a sustained chain?
Speaker 2:We the scientists, the archaeologists, and and the the medical, investigators at the science science level have found residues of lactose sugars in vases going back 13 to 15000 years ago in cave dwellers in Europe and in, you know, various parts of the world. So think about yourself as a man and a woman and and a child and and families are a group of people who are trying to survive. These people were starving. I mean, it was hard to thrive and survive without readily available food sources. You were always trying to hunt or fish or farm or gather or do something to eat.
Speaker 2:So gathering food and eating was the principal most important thing along with shelter. And if you could capture yourself a mammal, whichever one that was that lactated, that made milk, a donkey, a horse, any kind of a a lactating animal. And he captured it, put it on some or crop pasture or grass and he had any water and sunshine. You have the food today. And you could settle directly from that key to that animal, which I've seen pictures of, in India and in Africa and and even Mongolia.
Speaker 2:That infant, that child, that family thrived. And you could collect milk into that gourd, which was not clean, by the way, it was dirty. And that dirt was actually the cultures from last week's milk. And that last week, residues, the cultures, the bacterial cultures inoculated the milk. It made fear literally within 24 hours by fermentation naturally.
Speaker 2:And Kefir would have a very long shelf life for 60, 90 days just sitting in a warm environment. And if you strain that kefir, it became, deeper cheese or natural farmer's cheese. So it was really, really important for people to be able to have this portable, source of food to not to not, you know, have a problem to struggling. And so for many, many, I mean, for the millennia, mankind's been doing this in in Africa, in Asia, in in Mongolia, they've been doing in Northern Europe, all through Europe, Mediterranean. The goat, sheep, horse, the archaeologist, and the medical investigators said that it was probably one of the most important, things that has occurred in history for mankind to thrive and to have a competitive advantage as they said.
Speaker 2:So that said, let's go through all the Roman ages through, you know, Jesus Christ himself. What would what would Jesus drink? It was milk of milk, land of milk and honey was not pasteurized. That's for damn sure. And we have been really, really, really closely associated with our our cows go sheep and cohabitating with them.
Speaker 2:It share a much of a genome with them. The genetics that we have are very similar in in terms of the bacterial collaboration, the commensal and communal, kinds of things we did together was very closely associated. So we didn't have problems with that. Bring it now to the, let's say 1700 to 1800. People were bringing cows to America.
Speaker 2:In fact, all the pilgrims went back to Europe before the arrival of the first it was literally one of the things that allow us to sustain ourselves here. Now the Indians didn't drink raw milk. At least there's no evidence they did, but they eat raw organ meats all day long. And so organ meat have the raw fat necessary to have the fat soluble vitamin. It's right.
Speaker 2:So, you know, Europeans were not really in eating raw liver and raw heart and raw adrenal gland. We're more into the raw milk. It was very convenient. Nonetheless, the same ingredients were found in those. That said in 18/93, there was something called the milk problem.
Speaker 2:In fact, there's lots written about it. The milk problem identified the fact that there was major problems by bringing the cows into the cities from where they were before out in the countryside where they had fresh water and pastures and sunshine. And everybody every every other house had a cow out with countryside. It was part of life. You had a cow and a musk kid where you died.
Speaker 2:And the bottom line was they brought these cows into the city. They didn't have fresh water. They certainly did have pastures. And the cows were housed under these buildings that were being the cows were being fed brewers to stealers grains. And when you get brewers to stealers grains, it's not a nutrient dense product at all.
Speaker 2:In fact, it should have been depleted from it because you're making burn rate, you know, making alcohol from it. And the the water was filthy and the people milking the cows by hand were not well themselves. They let them had, tuberculosis and there's typhoid fever and all kinds of horrible things going on there. And so the milk come out. Well, morning when you're milking, a 100 cows were by hand, you put your feet in the milk.
Speaker 2:Well, I don't know about his feet just to go clean. So the bottom line is because it was cold. That milk was chilling. People were drinking. It was disgusting.
Speaker 2:And I'm the first to say it was disgusting. And so the remedy was either and that solves some of the problem because you still had dirty water and the dirty water cost a lot of problem. So they did not clean water from that countryside with going, you know, creeks and rivers. It was the filthy water inside cities with no fleshy toilets and just gulf everywhere. So with the way the version where you had doctor Henry Coit saying the American Association of Medical Milk Commissions of the AANMA had certified raw milk, actually supervised by by us by physicians in the countryside.
Speaker 2:That milk was going to the Mayo Clinic to heal people. It was clean raw milk. It was wonderful. Then you've got the filthy milk. There was me.
Speaker 2:And of course, that's the industrial solution. Right? That was the way to make filthy okay or relatively okay. Well, over time, and especially in World War 2, that one out in the thirties and forties when America let's think about the depression. Nobody had any money and he didn't eat cheap food.
Speaker 2:Well, in the 19 thirties, that was the solution. Just whatever milk you got, just cook the hell out of it. You're good to go. And nobody was considering or thinking about the bioactives or the bioavailability or the nutrient content of their food. Remember in World War 2, we're thinking about DDT was good for your skin, milking was good for your lungs, and nuclear bombs solve social problems, you know.
Speaker 2:So that was kind of the mindset where pasteurized milk started to win. And there were a lot of lies told about raw milk because certified raw milk were thriving, but their milk was more expensive. And the big processors couldn't go get that milk and do their processing with it. They had to, you know, go to the farms, pick up the milk, and then that milk was commingled together with other farm, had to be cooked because you couldn't control the the value of the or the quality of the safety of it. So by the 19 fifties sixties, you started dying off.
Speaker 2:A lot of the raw milk was dying off. And you saw the cheap milk prevailing. And the lab certified raw milk, the AMM certified, MMC certified milk was Altadena Dairy in Los Angeles in 1999. So it lasted about a 106 years and died off. That's where we picked up.
Speaker 2:That's where the raw milk gets started, establishing the same standard similar to AMMC, but a little different, a little more advanced. And then, obviously, we picked up on that marketplace in Los Angeles where people were didn't have any raw milk from the, certified raw milk people at Altadena. And so we picked up on that and ran off to the races. And now by building a strong brand and awareness of the science, because I attend the International Melt Genomics Consortium Conferences. UC Davis professors that actually study this stuff.
Speaker 2:They look at lactation, look at mammalian milk, breast milk, all kinds of milk. And I'm the only farmer in the room at these, conferences every year. And I take that science and I apply it to what we're doing on the food safety side, on the nutrient density side, and on the education side, on the podcast, side with the meat mafia here. And what do you know? People become aware, especially what post COVID, what builds your immune system?
Speaker 2:It's not a shot in the arm. That's suckers. It's short lived and it's good for last year's food about 3rd of the time. So what builds an adaptive and resilient immune system is the biodiversity of bacteria gut where your body built antibodies, all kinds of things versus just what you gotta shop for. Right?
Speaker 2:And so it is the adaptive resilient immune system puts here by mother nature's blueprint to protect mankind on earth. That's now the blueprints of people saying, wait a minute. Raw milk kefir, raw milk, raw butter, cream cheese, all these things, bio apps, and meat, and whole foods, and all of these whole food things together feed the bacterial diversity of your gut. Keeping it alive, well, and adaptive, and builds mucosal lining in the intestine, which is so important in terms of protecting us. So that's the short course on 15000 years ago to today.
Speaker 2:And it's really, really interesting that people are thriving. They're the ones that don't get the flu. They're the ones that have kids at daycare. They don't get or if they do, it's very short. Their body immediately react to, an antibody.
Speaker 2:They make an antibody and the ear infection rates are much lower. Absa gets decreased. The flu, colds, all that stuff dramatically reduced. Kids are thriving. That's the truth of farmers over pharmacy.
Speaker 2:And the FDA is willing to stop right now because they want everybody to rely on their pharmaceutical relationship to get the drugs to recover from, disease and illness. Instead of protecting against it, and increasing your ability to to deal with a chronic inflammation, with anti inflammatory foods like raw milk. They're they're wanting to fit with a pharmaceutical solution. So this is a revolution occurring as we speak through education and influencers saying, guys, there's a better way.
Speaker 3:Mark, there's that is so well said. There's so much information to unpack in that statement that you just made. But I think I think the biggest thing that I'm pulling from you is that when it comes to understanding frameworks around food, really looking back and knowing history is so incredibly important because I one of the conclusions that Harry and myself have formed is that to your point, meat and milk are very similarly bastardized. So where we started was understanding the demonization around saturated fat because we had gone carnivore, started eating all the food that conventional doctors were telling us not to eat. Those are the foods that really allowed us to heal.
Speaker 3:Harry ended up buying us 2 copies of the book, the untold story of milk by Ron.
Speaker 2:Should
Speaker 3:be. Now that's when we had learned about swill milk and the a lot of the historical events that you just talked about. And so a lot of these policies that are still in place around food are aversion to raw milk or aversion to saturated fat. This is an extension of things that occurred 50 to a 100 plus years ago that are still in place. And what you're saying is that instead of passer pasteurizing this Twilmilk, what if you actually just create milk, in relationship to God and build relationships directly with those farmers?
Speaker 3:And then you don't need to pass pasteurize it, and then you're getting all these amazing nutrients and bioactive ingredients like you're talking about that you're not gonna get in pasteurized milk.
Speaker 2:Exactly right. You are exactly right.
Speaker 1:Oh. You have
Speaker 2:to really recognize and just the the worthy foe. This is a worthy freaking fight here, guys. The FDA is so connected to establish that in terms of the money making machine around pharmaceuticals. In my opinion, if I was secretary of agriculture for a week, I would immediately strip all responsibility of the FDA for any food whatsoever. Keeping charge of of drugs and and pharmaceuticals and medical stuff.
Speaker 2:That's great. Let them be experts in that. Take that food and put it under the USDA. Put some dirt under it and make sure that it is food. It's where the beef is.
Speaker 2:That's where the eggs are. That's where the the the vegetables are. That's and and let that be where our food is regulated. Right now, the association with the Food Drugs and Cod Cosmetic Act, for instance, which is an FDA regulation, where I can't even speak our our own, social platform about food is medicine. I cannot bring forward any of the science that's done in Europe.
Speaker 2:And I'm talking about hundreds of studies done in the last 20 years about the medical benefit, the health benefits, the healing benefits of raw milk. I can't even bring forward breast milk. I can't correlate science. We spent 1,000,000,000 of dollars investigating and food because it creates a new drug because only drugs cure under our current policy. So that worthy foe is extremely well indoctrinated into policy.
Speaker 2:And we can't do the farmers over pharmacy thing except on a podcast like your own, which are not talking about, my brand birthday. We're talking about raw milk, and I'm not promoting me. I'm talking weed. And we really have to kind of be strong enough to end up and say no. The truth is important for people and not the processors.
Speaker 2:And that's where it really I mean, this battle, you know, I'm 63 years old. My son's 40. My my grandsons are, you know, 7 to 14 years old now, 13 years old. There's gonna be a battle we're gonna have for generations to buy back and bring back and and actually literally dollar vote back. Customers say no.
Speaker 2:Say, I want better than to change policy and change direction of our medical community because right now, I'm I was a paramedic for 17 years. So I am very familiar with medical problems. We need good strong medicine. Absolutely. We need good trauma centers when we got shot or car accidents are burned.
Speaker 2:But when it comes to chronic disease processes, we must redirect ourselves to nutrition in the gut microbiome. The science says, their immune systems are 85% in our gut microbiome. But, yeah, 24,000 people a year plus or minus a1000 depending on the year die from the flu. I'm sorry. I don't know anybody who drinks from them dies from the flu.
Speaker 2:It does I don't know. It's very rare for dust. The bottom line is where is our adaptive and resilient immune systems? And that's what our customers and that's what our people are wanting and they're getting it because it's the truth. And the truth always always prevails.
Speaker 2:It just takes time because of this stickiness. The stickiness of that regulatory thing which says no moving forward. If you don't, then you're you're illegal. That regulatory framework has to change and that's gonna take some time and a little bit education and some battle.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. The the regulatory aspect of raw milk is just I feel like continuing to enter the mainstream conversation and it it's really cool to see that, you know, more and more people are coming around the idea of food sovereignty and food freedom and that, you know, high quality food can be used as medicine. One of the things that I found really interesting as Brett and I started to explore raw milk, we wanted to connect with people who are actually producing. So we went out to, a town outside of Austin, to the Jersey Barnyard, which is, like, an hour outside of Austin.
Speaker 1:The owners, Ralph and Faith, have been multi generational raw dairy farm. We've got a bunch of Jersey cows out there, and we're just asking them, you know, what is what are your customers getting from this milk? And they started going deep into the healing powers of raw milk and how raw milk has helped a lot of people with autoimmune issues, gut issues, skin problems, even like diabetes, reverse some of these long, long medical prescriptions that, medicine couldn't figure out a problem for. So it was really powerful, and and I think that just hearing their stories about the healing power of raw milk was incredible, and it really started to turn a lot of gears for me. So I'm curious, what did you what did you attribute to that healing power of raw milk?
Speaker 1:And what what should people know about raw milk as a a healing agent versus pasteurized? Like, why why isn't pasteurized milk viewed in the same light as this healing source, when it comes to all these autoimmune issues?
Speaker 2:Yeah. There's a lot of meat on that bone to talk about literally. 2,022, there was a study done by the milk process association, the people who actually process milk in America. And the study was all about the things they wanted to take out of raw milk and make into a new patented pill potion or product. And there were 100 of these bioactive compounds, these proteins, these functional proteins, lactoferrin, alkyl phosphatase, peptidases, proteases, lipases, all these really the raw weight proteins, probably the most fake famous of all of them that are destroyed by heat.
Speaker 2:They're deactivated by heat. They're no longer bioactive. They're no longer biologically functional. They're destroyed. They're they're no longer they're they're inert.
Speaker 2:Those bioactive drive how we operate in our gut, how we operate in our bodies, designed by God himself in terms of infinite, literally the infinite interactions between our food and your body physiologically. Now when you consider that those bioactives are destroyed, but yet the process of the industry identifies them as incredibly important to take out and a great expense. They wanna take these out individually and concentrate them as a food. That is a mistake because the way these bioactives work is in the matrix of the whole. They interact with everything else, the raw fats, protein, the sugars, all these things together in their exact proportion, in their exact interactions, which are infinite.
Speaker 2:Literally, you you can't can never enumerate the number of interaction going on. It's just, blow your mind. It's like trying to count all the sand on a on a beach. It's impossible. So that said, when you take all that together, that's raw milk.
Speaker 2:And that's what causes the, anti inflammatory, anti tumor, pro immune system, antihypertensive, anti asthma, anti allergies. It stabilizes mast cells so it's to me and it's our release. I mean, it just goes on and on and on. You take all that and you you make it inert. Now you drink pasteurized milk and all you've got is sugar and a protein that's been denatured.
Speaker 2:Sometimes that just fuels the bacteria in your gut, which aren't healthy for you. You have some issues with all kinds of stuff going on there. And you don't put in the beneficial bacteria that need to compete in part of that matrix of the life, that diversity of bacteria, which in your gut. You're not bringing new stuff in. All you're doing is feeding with sugars and protein.
Speaker 2:Those things are already there and they're not bioactive. So you've got a real common at a physiological level going on when you're consuming pasteurized milk, which is basically been denuded and denutured and no longer vital versus something that's alive and well. Now the FDA will say all day long, there's no difference between the protein levels of raw milk and pasteurized milk. They're absolutely right. They're absolutely right.
Speaker 2:We don't change the protein levels. We change the living nature of the protein. The fact that it has an enzyme that coupling it, the enzymes are not being oh, excuse me. The proteins are not denatured. They're functional.
Speaker 2:They are building blocks that are ready to go. They have enzymes working with them. They've got their proteases with their proteins. They've got all these things going on. That's what we're talking about.
Speaker 2:They refused to go there because all they're saying is, oh, this vitamin or the protein are the same levels or they're not. No. That's not what we're talking about. They and they've done that intentionally, by the way, because they don't wanna go where I'm going. They don't wanna go where physiological activity of that product really makes the difference in your gut and in in your life and in your and that's why you see stories like I had Crohn's disease because I was eating all this American crap and taking all these drugs.
Speaker 2:They were turning off some of the signs of symptoms and underlying disease process continued. And I'm 2 or 3 weeks from having surgery to have my intestines removed or part of my intestine. And I have an ileostomy tube and and and poop in plastic bag. And I need it. I didn't do this with a friend of mine.
Speaker 2:Google, what do I do to build a new system and decrease the inflammation of my gut? They found that the raw milk and raw milk to fear in whole food nutrition, if given an opportunity over period of previous months, cures Crohn's irritable bowel. Well, interesting enough, I've got at least 10 examples of people that have done that where the doctor said nutrition does not matter. Take our drugs and if it doesn't work, we'll just take your surgery to fix. They have an economic investment interest in that guys.
Speaker 2:They have interest to do surgeries on people's intestines and have plastic bag. No. The bottom line is farmers over pharmacy. And when you go about changing the gut microbiome, crown environment where there's no longer inflammation, any authorization of of clots and and, Crohn's goes away. So, we've got many, many people who are delighted by the fact they no longer have irritable bowel syndrome.
Speaker 2:They don't have Crohn's g. And those are severe condition, that that have cured it with a whole food diet. And the raw fats and good fats and cholesterols are very, very healing. And they come from meat. And they come from raw fat in raw melt.
Speaker 2:The meat fats and raw fats are very similar. Very similar. So long story short, I mean, we we got stories. People with asthma, they were on the healers and their kids couldn't get near peanuts and all kinds of stuff. And after months being on a raw milk kefir diet and eating avocados and olive oil, all these wonderful Mediterranean foods, a Mediterranean diet type foods, they're running track and they don't have to take inhalers anymore off their carbon steroids.
Speaker 2:I mean, this story goes on and on and on about children that have no more ear infections, that had chronic ear infections, that back to back antibiotics all the time. They're no longer having that problem. They're clear. When their parents go over the grapevine to come to Fresno, you know, their ears aren't plugged because they don't the altitude changes. With commercial pilots that said, you know, I also always used to have pressurization changes in my aircraft or the non pressurized aircraft always had pressurization changes in there.
Speaker 2:But after drinking your mom up, they no longer have that because their eustachian tubes are open and don't have inflammation. So I tell you, this story is deep. Even the divers, people who do scuba diving have the same kind of experience with with, internal ear infections and stuff. So this is real. This is serious.
Speaker 2:People will experience it. Tell me these stories. I don't tell these stories to them. They tell me these stories. These these stories drive my passion, drive my purpose, especially when given my pre med background.
Speaker 2:And the fact that I saw 15,000 people, not all of them were in chronic trauma, but a lot of them are huge trauma. But you see this coming through all the time from asthma allergy. The one thing I used to see on all my medical calls was you go into the house and somebody's having some medical crisis. And there's still good food in the house and always a big pile of medications besides their bed. But yet they're in crisis.
Speaker 2:So this full full cycle for me personally, and I see such a humanitarian wave occurring that I just I'm surfing. I'm loving the fact that these people are so excited about the fact they can control their lives and go forward definitively, through through food as medicine versus a drug they have to take that has all these side effect that doesn't really cure the problem anyway.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Your the passion that you have is contagious, and it should get one that's listening hope because I think you're this incredible blend of someone that is, like, truly injecting your heart and soul into what you're doing, and your farm truly is. It's a it's a family run mission. If you go to the Raw Farm website, your daughter's working there or your yeah. Your daughter's working there.
Speaker 3:Your son's working there. Your son-in-law is working there. That I think so cool. And it's really this, like, sacred transaction to have customers like us that get to know their farmer like you on a first name basis. And we cut out the middleman and we decentralize and we transact work.
Speaker 3:You're working really hard to produce this product. We're giving you our hard hard earned dollar. It's such a it's a cool thing that so many people have lost. But like you had said, through the power of the Internet, we're bringing that back. And, also, Mark, when you're speaking, it's almost making me realize that I think we almost need to do a full overhaul of the new nutritional fast or on the back of a food product.
Speaker 3:Because your point, these governing bodies are so focused on purely macronutrient levels. So you take pasteurized milk, you take raw milk, The calories are the same. The saturated fats, the same. The protein content's the same. The sugar content's the same.
Speaker 3:But what it doesn't show on the new nutrition label are all these bioactives, all these nutrients, all these enzymes that you're talking about. And it makes it almost makes me think, like, when we think about what the world should be and what the future of food should be, it should be that adequate nutrition label that shows you all of these things you're getting from raw milk or regenerative meat versus these conventional products.
Speaker 1:It's really a product of industrial do. Right? Like, the we're thinking about how can we get one specific vitamin in our body, and we're ignoring the fact that as you said perfectly, the matrix of life does not provide one single vitamin in isolation. It's providing it in a combination of different functions between multiple vitamins. So it's so interesting that industrialization as a paradigm has just forced this way of thinking into good.
Speaker 1:I like how we think about it.
Speaker 2:I mean, there's so many changes on what you just said. The fact that America is spending 26% of its GMP on medical care in 1961 at 6%, which is about probably where it should be. But, I mean, we're sliding down, you know, bad. And it's a money making paradigm also. So the more money it makes, the more it wants to need.
Speaker 2:It needs to to stay alive. And the probably the most radical thing that's happening is when you take money away from something so powerful, they scream and yell about it. They don't like it. I don't know if you saw the news or not, but about a week and a half ago, HHS, their Healthy Human Services of the FDA, They gave a $176,000,000,000 to Moderna Mhmm. To create a mRNA vaccine for avian flu.
Speaker 2:And that's the h pie, the whole, cow flu thing.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And I was so upset. I submitted a government accountability office complaint on the whistleblower thing because I have received a phone call from a dairyman in the United States, the southwest, outside of California. But somebody said on May 1st, his cows had come down with h pyl. He talked to his vet. He had 6 cows come down, very loose, yellow stools, manure, diarrhea, low milk production.
Speaker 2:They didn't die, but but the interesting thing was that the veterinarian said, just take those 6 counts out of your herd and they'll recover by themselves in 2 weeks with antibodies to it. Don't get over it. And what do you know? In 2 weeks, they didn't. But during that period of time, because this young man has a brand that sells milk on retail shelves.
Speaker 2:Who knows? 100, if not, maybe thousands of people consumed some of this milk with these, h pie, viruses in it. But we know that h pie is not a gov a GI tract or foodborne disease process. It is a respiratory process. Respiratory, not GI.
Speaker 2:Nobody got sick. No complaint. Tasted delicious. Yes. He blew the cows out of the herd.
Speaker 2:However, before he caught the cows, he got in the milk. So some level of HPI was in the milk. Interesting enough, I got that phone call and I submitted, all kinds of information to the FDA immediately saying, guys, you need to look at this because it doesn't cause illness. Because I got I got the phone call. This had occurred on May 20th.
Speaker 2:So I submitted information to doctor Printer at the FDA saying, guys, wake up. Wake up. It probably doesn't cause illness in humans. And you know that because the science says it. And here's a real life and human experience with all these people.
Speaker 2:He didn't respond for 3 weeks. Then I wrote an email back to him saying, I'm concerned you're not reacting and responding to what I said. That was on, June 3rd. Excuse me, July 3rd. And he responded saying, tell me more.
Speaker 2:I told him as much as I knew. Still hasn't responded with that. And interesting thing is, now the state that this problem occurred in, they're denying it occurred. They deny there was a problem because they don't want the social pressure of having had this been have an answer to the question that come about this. And meanwhile, the FDA had been pushing h pi or this highly pathogenic avian influenza, which is not hylopathic, by the way, in the media for the last 6 months.
Speaker 2:And so the science in real life experience is depressed because of the forces at Moderna literally getting their $170,000,000,000. And if you look at the Moderna, they were having a challenge because their income dropped substantially because they're no longer making COVID vaccinate, making 1,000,000,000 of dollars. So it's the sustain the sustainability of creating a new crisis so you could fix a new crisis. And in this case, there was no crisis. There was no crisis.
Speaker 2:Didn't occur. It has not occurred. There's been no illnesses from raw milk and 8 pie in the United States. Not one. Yeah.
Speaker 2:We're spending $176,000,000 on Moderna to create a vaccine nobody wants anyway. Not even a basis for even taking. There's nobody dying. So this is the insanity and the entrenched politics of what's going on at the highest level, or I should say the lowest levels, depending on how you look at it. So the truth needs to get out.
Speaker 2:The truth needs, you know, the bioactive sound in raw milk are very, very antiviral. That's why kids don't get viruses. They don't get flu and cold and the European thing is still clear on that. So it's interesting that consumers that would consume his milk now are consuming milk from cows. They don't have antibodies for that milk in there, for that virus in the milk.
Speaker 2:And it's highly healing and protective. So mother nature blueprints are being ignored and suppressed, in favor of pharmaceutical interests to make a bunch of money. And that's just so sad. So I just thought I'd tell that little story too because it's breaking news to me. We're gonna be on, probably tomorrow or the next day.
Speaker 2:LA Times has a major breaking story on this where they came out and interviewed me and and story that's really gonna be thick and deep with science and why this is growing the way it is. Wow.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Well
Speaker 1:It it really it seems like this isn't a story that's in isolation. Like, I we had the strong sisters. I'm not sure if you're familiar with them. They, live in Michigan. They run a co op called the Nourish Co op.
Speaker 1:And they were just, I think just last week, raided by the Michigan Department of Agriculture, threw away $90,000 worth of raw dairy products simply because, avian flu scare, the h five n one. So I'm curious to get your take on that a little bit more. Do you like, what what do you think the real risk factors are with the bird flu? Do you think it's or and what do you think the motives are for kind of pushing this fear out into the public, blood consciousness? Like, why why are why is this why are people getting raided for having raw dairy farms, during this time?
Speaker 2:Well, I will start with the science. Peg Coleman with Coleman Scientific is an ex USDA risk analysis and medical biologist. But she did a meta analysis, which is a study of all studies. Right? Looking at all the information available at PubMed and other archiving literature database and found that there was no evidence at all that this particular h five n one virus lacked the genetic potential to make the jump to humans.
Speaker 2:And it was a virus that was actually communicated by, respiratory communication transmission, not GI tract. It wasn't like norovirus, which can cause problems in GI tract. It wasn't like that. It was different. Genomically, genetically, it was different.
Speaker 2:So the FDA knows their their scientists are very smart. But remember post COVID, they really, really beat up a big fear campaign on COVID. Now I'm not saying that COVID didn't kill people. It did. It really did.
Speaker 2:It killed those that had compromised immune systems in poor health. That's who it killed. It weeded out the herd, and everybody, even those that got back to it. And I, unfortunately, made the choice to become vaccinated. I had a a Moderna vaccine myself.
Speaker 2:Being the old paramedic, I said, what the hell? Let's do it. And I I I could COVID. It wasn't severe, but I got COVID. Now maybe it would have been worse if I didn't, but I know a lot of people that didn't get vaccinated.
Speaker 2:They had strong resistance. They had no effect whatsoever from COVID. It's sometimes they didn't have COVID at all. So bottom line is, there's a huge push and a momentum within pharmaceutical which you once funded the COVID vaccination and you you created mRNA, they're gonna want a wave, 3rd wave, 4th wave, the new way that they can make money. So in my opinion, I think this whole Moderna thing is a perfect example of you created a large capacity organization.
Speaker 2:You have bigger paychecks to fill. You've had profits in the past and now that's passed. How do you sustain their organization without another crisis? And so with the classic, we need something to fix because we've got this big machine that fixed the last one in their minds. So our consumer base is saying, not again, not on my watch.
Speaker 2:We're not gonna do that to ourselves again. No way. The side effects of COVID vaccine, MRR, horrible. The people have had problems with that thing. It's not a natural process.
Speaker 2:It's not attenuated natural viruses. It's some lab manufactured spike protein thing that's crazy crazy doing all kinds of stuff. So the people were saying no, and they're saying we want a natural process whereby we have an adaptive immune immune system in our gut. And they're studying these same PubMed articles are available for everybody to read and people could become smart. So there's a lot of real disconnect.
Speaker 2:And if you think about this, the FDA for the last 6 months without any basis whatsoever has been saying, don't drink raw milk. Don't drink raw milk. And by the way, their extract smoke has had tons and tons and tons of ABM fluid because it's combined between a 100 different dairies together in one brand and a bit Cremesylo. And, yeah, Hashivization does denature most of that that virus. I I agree.
Speaker 2:However, even the active virus would not cause disease because the science says it. And now we have a dairy that sold this milk to a bunch of consumers unknowingly. It was accidental. It didn't didn't cause any harm whatsoever, and the health department confirmed there was no illness whatsoever. So now we have the science.
Speaker 2:We also have a real life example of what happens when it happens. It happened in May. But the FDA suppresses that, doesn't acknowledge it, refuses to explore it, will not go out and do a mission to to to from discovery to find out what the truth is. Instead, they send a 100 and $7,000,000,000 to their buddy over at Madera so he can make a $1,000,000,000 pile high a little deeper. And and that in my opinion is lying to the people.
Speaker 2:And what's happening is the FDA has earned a reputation has earned a reputation for not telling the truth, for leading. And when you mislead people, they don't tend to the crying wolf. Right? You do that repeatedly. After a while, people say, I don't think there is a wolf, guys.
Speaker 2:You've been crying wolf every time there isn't one and therefore I'm not gonna listen to you now. And so people would rather listen to you guys, to Harry and Brett than the FDA. Because your life experience is grounded in your own experiences and what you're doing. And that is that is a really, really important tribute to the fact that people are listening to influencers, people they trust and believe and love and believe in versus the FDA that got pharmaceuticals all the way in their wallet. So that's what's going on now is people are saying, no.
Speaker 2:I'm not gonna listen to the FDA anymore. I'm listening to farmers. I'm listening to those that have experienced a strong immune system. And I'm gonna go farmers over pharmacy. And that's what's going on, guys.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:Yeah. It's it's interesting that you say that because had I not listened to podcasters, farmers, even Reddit threads, I would still be on medication that was costing me $400,000 a year, shitting blood versus being clinically healed in the best shape of my life. And I think why it's so important that people that are putting out this information are actually sharing modalities of how they actually were able to heal themselves in sharing true science where conventional medicine is just like, nope. That's anecdotal. That doesn't fit within our peer reviewed
Speaker 2:Uh-huh.
Speaker 3:At randomized controlled trials, etcetera. That's not science We're real science is is healing and taking all these different source of in of information, applying them, and figuring out what works best for you, which is why the information you're talking about, Mark, is so important. Mark, one of the questions I really wanted to ask you because I think this is really important. I do think there might be a slight misconception around raw milk in the fact that the smaller the dairy is, it's a better indication of the fact that the milk is gonna be really high quality, and it's easier to keep clean. And I think why raw farm is so important is that you've proven that you can have the largest raw raw organic farm in the world and still have incredibly incredible quality of milk.
Speaker 3:So I would just love to learn, you know, what things have you been doing over the years where you can continue to scale and also make incredible milk as you intended since, like, the 19 nineties when
Speaker 2:you took over the farm. Fantastic question. We may be milking 1800 cows in 2 darriers, but we treat those 1800 cows like they're 20 cow dairy. That is the really key thing. And then this is super important, right, in in here.
Speaker 2:We use extremely high standards that are not even in the same bulk work or even in the same Milky Way galaxy as the milk for pasteurization. So standards standards matter. In California, we have a separate set of standards for raw milk versus pasteurization. At the Raw Milk Institute, we created something called the Common Standards, which is what's been applied around the world. We've trained farmers in 175 farmers in Great Britain, 70 or in 2018.
Speaker 2:And we don't call it certifying, but we call it listing, where they actually get a public portal at the Ronald Institute website to show people how they apply those standard. So when milk is comingled together from 50 or a 100 different dairies into 1 big silo tank, the number of pathogens are uncounted and they don't care because it's all gonna get pasteurized. And the bacterial cancer astronomically high. Too numerous to count. Put it that way.
Speaker 2:It's it's it's a miracle. It's not yogurt. Yeah. You know, it really is. And then when you look at our melt, very low low bacteria count still have the diversity, but because we chill the milk in 2 minutes versus in 2 hours.
Speaker 2:Now some some of the bigger dairies do chill it quickly. Yes. They do. It's not required. So it's commingled with those dairies that don't.
Speaker 2:Could take up to 2 hours or more to get them up below 50 degrees. Our milk goes from 99 degrees, the bottom temperature down to 36 degrees, 3 degrees above freezing in 2 minutes. Completely different standard. Extremely clean bacteria, for others. Very, very clean pathways.
Speaker 2:No biofilm. A lot of testing. We're spending a half $1,000,000 a year on testing because we know that if a pathogen does get through and there are some people out there with very compromised immune systems, they could get sick. And since I don't know everybody that's consuming our products, they'd walk by and pick our our milk up off the of the store shelf at Erewhon or sprouts or nugget markets or lots of market. And they may be saying, you know what?
Speaker 2:I've got a really compromised immune system. I want to build it back better. Well, they're the ones that could get sick too as they do build back better. So the bottom line is we are very into into the cutting head of testing. And if you have 1 cow in 700 cows, let's say, and she's contributing a pathogen into that milk.
Speaker 2:You can't find her because that bacteria may be, hiding out in 6,000 gallons of milk. It's hard to find that pathogen at low levels, but it's just the cows in 20 cow composite sets where you test those cows together every week, you actually eliminate the pathogen at the cow level before it even gets to the bulk tank. So that's the kind of pioneering we do to manage our herds at great because we're serving humanity, which comes in all walk. Not those that ever both robust immune system. They could take a path to them.
Speaker 2:Who cares? We're talking about the ones that can't. That we want to build back their immune system, so maybe they can in the future. So there's just all about the standard, man. It's a standard.
Speaker 2:It's what there's 3 things that the PubMed literature said about our standard. And there's 2 2 studies out done by international researchers that looked at the raw milk institute and the data we could every farmer that that produced milk submits bacterial counts for their data every month or every week, sometimes every day. That data revealed that three things changed the world for raw milk. 1, completely separate and very intensive standards. Number 1.
Speaker 2:Number 2, farmers training to assure they understand the standards and how to use them. And number 3, routine testing to make sure you're actually compliance with the standard. We hear those three things, your mouth's a completely different product. So I would say it's much easier to handle a smaller operation. I agree.
Speaker 2:It is. No question about it. So a cow operation, it's got 5, 10, 15, 20 cows. You know those cows by name. You you know everything going on with them.
Speaker 2:You know everything about them. If you're a knowledgeable farmer, it's pretty easy to manage, I would say. As as your farmer gets bigger and bigger and bigger, you have to have more and more system involved to track and understand each cow individually. And that's what we do and we do it very well. But that just mean that we're the best somebody else for us training and do testing once in a while.
Speaker 2:So, it's about we, guys. All of us working together to feed humanity, not just us.
Speaker 1:Mark, you mentioned that you guys, lower the temperature of the milk down to 36 degrees. Is there any effects on the enzymes in lowering the temperature or any any of the perfect does it change the protein at all? No.
Speaker 2:We don't. We know because of all the studies done on breast milk bank that freeze their milk. Tremendous amount of studies been done on human milk, breast milk, and has no effect. In fact, what's interesting about that is if you do take it out 6 to 9 months, there is an effect that kind of an oxidation occurs because it's, the the ice crystals expand and push onto the butterfat globules. There's an option that sits there at low temperatures.
Speaker 2:However, in the 30 to 60 day rate, literally nothing can be measurably different. It's very, very similar bioactivity there, bioactive there, bioavailability is there, vitamins are there, bacteria is there, enzymes are fully active. You gotta remember, we create life through frozen eggs and sperm. So really, free freezing is pretty, benign of all the treatments. It's certainly absolutely benign in terms of bringing bringing we have a lot of customers last 15 years that have been, buying boatloads of our mouth, freezing it, and then thawing 1 a week or 2 a week or 3 week as needed because they didn't wanna drive long distances.
Speaker 2:So I would say freezing, especially when it's done rapidly, is very, very good.
Speaker 3:Mhmm. Mark, when I was, when I was living in California and consuming a bunch of your products, my favorite way to start off my day was I would take a nice cup of black coffee. I would throw your raw cream in there, which is, like, so rich and has the perfect consistency. And I would take collagen protein, and I would blend it up together, and it was, like, the perfect morning beverage. Is there anything about heating up the milk or the cream to high levels that affects the protein or the nutrient content?
Speaker 2:Let's think that for a second. Let's see if that coffee that coffee is a 130 degree. I don't know. I'm just picking a number here. As you pour the cream into that coffee, the cream is cold.
Speaker 2:The coffee temperature drops. So the first cream that actually ended the coffee is probably gonna have some denaturing that occurs. But the last cream that goes into the temperature changes, it's not gonna have any effect at all. So it's a combination of fact. It all has to do with heating.
Speaker 2:Remember, enzymes change at different temperatures, for every enzyme. So some enzymes start to change at a 115 degrees Fahrenheit. Other ones are unchanged to a 130, a 140, a 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Other ones, a 150. The lowest temp castration is 145 degrees for 30 minutes.
Speaker 2:And not all enzymes are denatured. Just key ones are in, are denatured. The raw weight protein denatured. So I would say that, in doing the coffee thing, you're you're having minimal effect, maybe slight. But overall, you're getting a lot of those bioactive still in in empowered, still engaged.
Speaker 2:It's still functional with at least some of that. Now if it's super hot coffee and let's say you do a cappuccino where it's really broiled. Yeah. You're losing it all. That's why you need to have a Ramos Kefir Smoothie to go with that.
Speaker 2:So enjoy your cappuccino, but have a, a smoothie. It's got lots of blueberries and strawberries. And when you put the strawberry in there, leave the top on it. The green top is filled with all kinds of wonderful minerals, and vitamins. And a raw egg and meat protein and colostrum, stuff and, avocado and put some raw honey in there and raw milk kefir.
Speaker 2:All that stuff together. Even some leafy greens if you want. Blend that all up. It's going to have a little bit of sweetness to it. It's going to be incredibly nutrient dense, extremely bioavailable, and you're not going to have any kind of hunger pains for about 6 hours.
Speaker 2:And you're going to have your gut is going to be happy, happy with antioxidants and bioactive and raw fats and everything all good to go. So people that really wanna heal their gut with Crohn's and have gut inflammation problems will make themselves a designer smoothie. It has Ramak Kaffir, an avocado, raw egg, lots of berries, antioxidant berries, and fiber stuff. Maybe some colostrum stuff, maybe some meat protein, raw meat protein stuff. Doctor Sal Paul Saladino has it.
Speaker 2:Stuff that you guys are making all that stuff. Put that in there altogether. Plus any other things you want some raw, maybe some, raw honey. I would not use any kind of fake sweeteners ever on your life. They're terrible.
Speaker 2:You terrible with your brain and your and your gut. And you've got yourself maybe throw some kale in there or or or whatever. A spinach. And you blend it all together. The flavors of the kefir and the berries are gonna supersede everything.
Speaker 2:And the raw honey is gonna give a little bit of a nice flavor in terms of sweetness. Not a lot, but some. And you're gonna have something that's fantastic for your gut. And that's what people are using to literally, decrease the inflammation in the gut and get rid of the ulceration growth. And I'll tell you what, that's a superfood.
Speaker 2:And you really don't need much more than that for breakfast. You really don't. I
Speaker 3:was gonna say to your point, Mark, I remember when I was reading the untold story of milk because Harry had bought us 2 copies about 2 years ago. Don't remember the gentleman's name, but one of the cofounders of the Mayo Clinic was taking patients almost a 100 years ago that had Crohn's and colitis and putting them on these raw milk fasts, and they were decreasing their inflammation levels and, like, medically curing themselves of something that's deemed uncurable. It's not a book
Speaker 2:with diabetes. Some place right here. The milk cure, chronic disease. Yes. Doctor Porter.
Speaker 3:That was it. That yeah.
Speaker 2:Yep. And they would raw milk from certified dairy, the AANMC, the doctor Coit, work that he did, t 93, which was available all through the twenties, thirties, and 40. And they would literally eliminate or redo I don't know that they cured everybody, but I'll tell you what. A tremendous number of people were healed by consuming raw milk only for 20, 30 days at a time. And remember, babies only consume raw milk.
Speaker 2:They don't even drink water. And so it is a fantastic gut healing boot because that's how it was designed by nature and God himself to start life. It was the only thing consumed by babies to build that wrong adaptive and resilient immune system and gut microbiome. These gut microbiome formative food, the raw fats, the proteins, the sugars, all these enzymes, phenomenal. The the fat itself, the globule the globule, the butterfat globule itself, it's fiber dense product.
Speaker 2:It's got there's fiber there. And the buturates the buturates come from the the milk, fat globule membrane. And so this fiber, there's actually fiber in the fat itself. So it's a phenomenally incredible food and it was going to Mayo Clinic to heal people. Why can't it go to the Kaiser, Foundation or or some clinic now and heal people?
Speaker 2:Why not? Why wouldn't that be a lot cheaper? Let me tell you what. Back in 2004, there was a doctor at a local children hospital literally 25 miles north of us who had a child who had problems in his gut. He had the local's sheriff's department run code 3 with lights and clearance to our dairy to get milk, to get back to that kid.
Speaker 2:And from what we were told by the doctor within a couple of hours, that child's gut crisis had come down. It had come down substantially from where it was. Just by getting a couple cups of this raw milk in their gut, it calmed. That is a doctor who knows what the hell they're doing. And I'm telling you, we need to have farmers over pharmacies.
Speaker 2:We cannot be rely on our pharmaceuticals. Although I'm the first one to say we need that too. It's a hybrid of both. It's about 20% modern medicine, about 80% food, and you get the best outcome. We need to start the food early in life so you don't need the 20%.
Speaker 2:Right?
Speaker 1:No. Totally. Yeah. It's it's, such a good messaging. And I think it's helpful to for anyone listening, you know, I think it can be really doom doom and gloom when you're thinking about pharmaceutical industry and its growth and power and incentives and all the momentum behind it.
Speaker 1:But at the end of the day, people I I truly believe, you know, people have the motivation to be healthy and to thrive and to want to live an abundant life. And I think at the core of that, it's how do you feed yourself, nutritionally? And, you know, there's a lifestyle component to that as well, but really a lot of it just starts with with diet and real foods.
Speaker 2:I Harry, I think you're absolutely correct. We have to be patient but passionate. And so if you do patience and passionate, that means you consistently persistently teach, teach, teach. And because we're teaching the truth here, we're not so phony, weird, big crowd. We're talking about serious stuff to make big differences.
Speaker 2:And when you get a a kind of a a level of market penetration where people are dollar voting, they're saying, nah, I'm not doing the drugs. I'm doing the food. And you start to veer that guiding hand becomes incredibly powerful, especially in America here where you're choosing health through gut microbiome, nursing food, and you're avoiding the other drugs and reducing it over time. That is absolutely not confusing anybody what's gonna go on because you're gonna get a force of nature happening in the marketplace, which demands it. And you're gonna have more and more farmers doing it.
Speaker 2:You have better, better training for farmers. You're gonna have and eventually, you actually have regulatory change because people watch it. They're buying it. They're supporting it. They're that happened to a certain extent here in California.
Speaker 2:We're now in 100 stores or so, and and and and we have 5 dairies a day daily in America and a dairy a week in California that are the pasteurized guys. They're dying. And it's terrible because they're doing a great job what they're supposed to do, But nobody's wanting their products at the levels they were before. And so that's gonna be here for a long time because you want people want cheap food and and you got the regulatory thing. You've got cheeses that are gonna get cooked on top of pizzas.
Speaker 2:They don't need to be raw. There's There's all kinds of stuff going on there. But same time, you're gonna see a continued evolution in growth of raw by dollar voting. And so the consumers themselves can be self determinate in their futures by simply where they put their dollars. So if a consumer is gonna go out and buy sustainable food and support that farmer and it needs a life change to them and they make sure it fit in their own children and they tell other families and they tell other families and that farmer if other farmers start doing it more, you start seeing evolution.
Speaker 2:You start seeing change from the grassroots up. That's the strongest time because it doesn't matter what the FDA says. Say, the sky is falling on your head. Bring it on. I don't care.
Speaker 2:Cut. The truth is all but in their life. And so the truth is obviously gonna come out over time. Yeah. Unfortunately, it's taking a tremendous toll on us as we endure the lies, as we endure these symptom relievers, these, turn off the warning lights, your engine blows kind of foods.
Speaker 2:Right? Yes. So it's all about empowerment of people through education and having farmers that are well trained that could supply that product to people so they can make that choice. We'll say one thing that's really cool to me, and I think there's a lot of hope. Delaware, highly illegal to produce raw milk forever.
Speaker 2:Delaware just changed their laws The the actual legislation is before where the governor, right now, it's all passed their senate 39 to 2. Wow. And so they they worked with us the last 9 months to educate the legislature of performing the promise of of what could be possible for Delaware to have world class raw milk into Delaware. People driving 4 hours down. So they ended up, pick a problem up from the Amish.
Speaker 2:Come back. They're gonna have their own product. And by the way, I have to give tremendous credit to Michael, who's the secretary of agriculture, came out in support of raw milk. He said, let's bring world class raw milk here. Let's have on farm labs every farm, so farmers can measure their own bacterial count and know what they're doing.
Speaker 2:Just like any MMC. And he followed the raw milk institute standards. So we're really, really excited about the promise of future for Delaware. But that can also be the model. That could be the perfect example of what could happen in other places where people would become aware that their citizens deserve to be connected to their farmers locally.
Speaker 3:Mark, do you think does it do you agree with the fact that raw milk is a state by state issue, or do you think this is something that should be federal?
Speaker 2:That's a great quest. In a perfect world, it would be regulated federally, but locally, actually, the testing would be done locally. But, you know, I spent 5 hours with Paul Shanahan, who's the vice president of candidate with, RFK. Here at our farm about 2 weeks ago, she was here with a news crew and everything. She had her security team.
Speaker 2:It was amazing. It's incredible. And she said, I want within 5 years, top of America drinking Ramak because we cannot afford the medical paradigm we have going forward for everybody's bankrupting us. So if you had passion at the highest levels of our government, you wouldn't just have sort of a massive you'd have congress of massive. You'd have the FDA saying, you're gonna change your your your position or we're gonna get rid of you.
Speaker 2:Then you would have paradigm shift pretty quickly. But I'm telling you that is a tsunami of it's a major category 7 hurricane for America in terms of the medical paradigm and the dairy paradigm and who has power and who who is the pressing what your policy issues. So for now, I'm suggesting that. I think that's kind of an impossible dream, kind of almost a horror story. It's kind of a crazy thing.
Speaker 2:What I would suggest is con continue the grassroots absolute foundation building from the farmers up to the consumers and let that be absolutely non erodible. That is it's non it's it's it's it's just built strong from the ground up. At some point, there'll be a breaking point. Somebody in the admin is gonna say, this makes sense. I'm on raw mouth myself.
Speaker 2:I love it. It's been great for my kids. Why shouldn't everybody have it? But I think it's gonna be another generation or 2 before that occurs, but it's happening now. And I foresee this.
Speaker 2:I say it now because I experienced the foundational level. It will happen. It's already happening. Yeah. It's just a matter of time.
Speaker 2:And I believe that the speed of technology I mean, Steve Jobs gave us gave us an interesting little tool with our icons here. The speed of technology, the ability to identify a pathogen on the farm is happening. And we able to quickly, rapidly, and truly. So you get data in 2 hours or 3 hours versus 36 or 48 hours off farm at extreme expense. So you can have pathogen free milk at a very low risk feed on the farm.
Speaker 2:You built a tremendous amount of value added for the farmer themselves. And I I think that that is the kind of the next wave of the speed of rapid accurate testing of pathogens on farm is a technological thing that will happen, which will trigger this. It's already happening. We're already doing it on our farm. Mhmm.
Speaker 3:Makes you wonder maybe that maybe that would be, Biden's secret during the debates is get him some raw milk and raw cream. Turn the lights back on. You know what I'm saying?
Speaker 2:I love Biden. Great man. I think his heart's the right place. I think he's got one thing off and that's the Gaza policy. He has not been aggressive enough there.
Speaker 2:He needed to turn that switch off. You'd have peace. I'm a humanitarian. I've always been. And so p is a wonderful international trade policy because when people are at peace, they trade.
Speaker 2:They're not in fear and protection and spending all their money on military things. So, I I hope I wish the best of Biden, but I do I believe that, yeah, his brain and gut would have worked better if he was on Ramel for sure. It's a little old to change that old cat. I I I certainly have no support whatsoever for Trump. I think he's a madman.
Speaker 2:But that's just speaking from my heart. We serve all feet all in in feet, you know, love all. And we would serve everyone equally in a room. But at the same time, I think that that there's a better outcome for decision making when you've got microbiome is working with your brain. They got they got brain connection.
Speaker 2:They access, you so you see a lot less crime. You saw less ADD, you see a lot less everything. Your kids are doing better in schools. It's just gonna be a much better paradigm when people are nourished in their gut first, and the brain's gonna work a lot better.
Speaker 1:Mark, to that point, what do what do you think when you because I've seen some news articles recently talking about raw milk being associated with some other extremist movements. What what do you think about the politicalization of raw milk, to that extent? Or, you know, it's getting identified with different ideologies. Sure.
Speaker 2:I I think the the studies have been pretty interesting about that. And I think go down to the the local level. When you, are in California, it's not associated with the ideology at all. We got left, right, middle, everybody in Ramel. No big deal.
Speaker 2:It's not associated with left or right. But you go to a state where Ramel is heavily depressed and you are kind of a rebel, let's say on the right wing. Let's say you're right wing. And you're saying, how dare you use to press my freedoms? You're gonna associate raw up with freedom.
Speaker 2:And I get that 100%. And they're gonna champion that. It happened in Delaware quite a bit, but we also get we got a lot of of, bipartisan support a 100%. Because they realize it wasn't about whether you're left or right or red or or or blue. It was about whether you had kids or not.
Speaker 2:And so it it seen it where those areas where you have the the least amount of freedoms, you'll see the right wing really champion it as a freedom issue. But when you have raw milk is kind of available to everybody, not a left or right issue at all. It is a human right. It is a a nutritional right issue. And so, I do see it being reflected in the media and the media to writing about the local story about how somebody in the right way pick you up a champion championed raw milk.
Speaker 2:I haven't seen Trump come out and advocate for raw milk at all. He's drinking his diet Pepsi or whatever he's drinking. So I don't I don't get that really as a pure thought in terms of right versus left. But I do understand. I do agree that it has been written about as a, a partisan issue where you have freedoms that are suppressed.
Speaker 3:Yeah. It's it's really interesting because you've mentioned, RFK's VP coming out to meet with you for multiple hours. I saw a video some promotional video for him where he was talking about chronic disease and this, you know, kinda like the the monopoly of the food system. They've been talking about it for multiple minutes in this promo video where we've talked about all these different issues. I know he's been out to White Oak Pastures before.
Speaker 3:It's really cool to see a candidate that's addressing these fundamental levels with our food system so, so closely. It's pretty it's pretty incredible, and it's gonna be interesting to see what the these younger crops of candidates that are more plugged in, you know, seeing this become more of a political issue because this really should transcend both lines of the political spectrum.
Speaker 2:It should. I personally if I was gonna say any RFK right now would be if you would be pro peace in Gaza, stop firing bullets there immediately. He'd pick up the Muslim boat and his whole entire platform on nutrition is rock solid. Fantastic. I love it.
Speaker 2:I love it. He would do so much better than he currently is. So he needs to differentiate himself from both, you know, current, you know, candidates, Biden and Trope. And he could do that by by doing something that's really pro piece. In my opinion, I think that would really work well for him, but I don't know why he hasn't done that yet, but he should.
Speaker 3:Mark, one of the things I wanted to ask you is that I saw a statistic that Raw Farm currently feeds 50,000 cal California families, which is such an incredible statistic. And then you think about all the raw dairy farmers that you've trained, the number that kind of stems back to you is probably in the millions, which is so unbelievable to think about the nourishment that's coming from these practices. What is that feeling actually like knowing that you're making a dent and a difference in this thing that seems so overwhelming and actually proving that we can win this war in terms of food sovereignty and nourishing our community?
Speaker 2:Well, while you're in a battle, you you tend you tend not to know what it's gonna look like after the battle. You kinda feel like you're in the battle. I think I'm kind of there a little bit, but I've immersed myself so much in the educational side of this that, I do feel really, really good about all these reported, cases of of improved, illness or improved, health with our foods. So I'm just getting a sense of what it is like after the battle a little bit now, which is wonderful. But I I think that, educating has been one of the greatest things for me to keep my heart straight.
Speaker 2:Was when you teach people and they come back and say, you know, you told me and a half to 3 years ago, and now I'm having a different life because of it. I feel very sustained by that. So, again, we got the truth in the moms. They may have the gun guns and the money, but truth in the moms are so important because you can live by those things. The mom that comes to our our on farm store here and buys our product and tells me a story about how fantastic your kids are doing, it gives me big hug and tears in her eyes.
Speaker 2:That drives you at a deeper humanity level. It allows you to do things that are very brave because you know who you're working for. You know who you're representing. We've had FDA inspectors at our farm for weeks at a time, and I've given them a head trip on raw milk. I've I showed them all the archived information at their own website about raw milk and breast milk and all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 2:And I I really do think I changed their minds about why I fight like I fight and why I'm educating like I'm educating. So I send weakness back into their foundations for the fact that they have self reflection on what they're actually doing to themselves and for themselves and by themselves. I I I don't know. There's just, like I said, a stickiness to the paradigm for where people tend to stay with what they know and they don't like to change. And to change means you have to admit to something that wasn't right.
Speaker 2:And that takes flexibility in your mind. It takes an open mind. It takes an open heart. And that's why we generally don't teach Ramel. I mean, sell Ramel.
Speaker 2:We don't go out, sell, buy, buy, buy, buy, or we never say buy. No, they never say it. It's your choice. What we do is we teach about your immune system so you can make an intelligent, informed choice yourself. And that's really empowering to people.
Speaker 2:And I think that that has caused, like you said, a ripple effect where we found a multiplier effect. I real realized back in 2010, 15, 12, 14, 15 years ago that we will not emerge as a brand ourselves unless all boat all boats were floating in the harbor. All, the tide raised all boats, raised all boats. So reaching out to train what people might argue is my competition. What's super important to me because I wanted all raw milk to be a good experience.
Speaker 2:And so developing a stand for raw milk and training farmers farmers unselfishly was one of the greatest things he ever done for our own brand. Yeah. Because we share customers. People that might visit your Gary in Texas or some other place, they come here and they drink ramen my ramen. And then they have a good experience.
Speaker 2:Well, they go back to Texas. They want that same experience. So I'm not gonna feed everybody. I don't want to feed everybody. I wanna feed those that that are nearby me, that are local to me.
Speaker 2:And I want farmers to feed their local farmer. So I'm not sure if they're local as far as state by state is concerned. I do know that our raw pet food is being distributed nationally as we speak. It's for animal consumption only, and I will not speak about that, at all. It comes off the exact same production line, and we it is it is labeled.
Speaker 2:It's only for pet food consumption. That's the FDA thing we have to comply with. So only that alone. The bottom line is the more we can have local food, feed local, consumers, the more resilient we'll be as a food system. During COVID, our our farmer friends were dumping milk in their lagoons because their processors couldn't take the milk because tools were shut down, institutional sales were shut down, and all they have is stores.
Speaker 2:So 30% of their their product sales were gone and they couldn't retool with palletizing and labeling or whatever they had, go to the stores only. And for 90 days, when we'd show up at the stores because we adapted immediately when COVID hit in February, March of 2020, they would say, just leave every can on the shelves and take the entire shelf. Don't worry about skewed base because you're no no pasteurized milk's gonna be here for 30 days. We found that to be real here in California. And we kept picking up our milk.
Speaker 2:We didn't ever drink raw milk. And they call us the farm saying, see this really expensive milk here. What's it do? And we explained to them. So we had an educational opportunity and but we were able to be resilient.
Speaker 2:We weren't dumping milk to the lagoon. We were short on milk. We had to stop making cheese and make milk because the stores, they ran immediately. They'd come back 2 or 3 times a week and fill the shelves because there's nobody else there. So during a food crisis, whether you like what happened in 2020 or not, it was a crisis.
Speaker 2:We were we were receiving our local community benefit than anybody because we're adaptive or resilient. So during this stress test of 2020, we thrive when other dairies, they work in this monopoly consolidated NASS died. So there's just so much proof here to look at. It's just amazing.
Speaker 1:Well, Mark, I know you don't need to hear this, but we just truly appreciate what you're doing. You know, from our perspective and just knowledge of raw milk, what you're doing is truly a humanitarian effort, not just some click baity. Raw milk is great for you. Thing that, you know, a lot of, I think influencers have done a great job popularizing raw milk, but like you are doing the true God's honest work and educating and providing the product. So, we're just so thankful that there are people like you out there, as you are a source of inspiration for Brett and myself.
Speaker 1:And I just wanna give you a word of encouragement to keep going because, your work is incredible and just, there were so appreciative.
Speaker 2:I I believe that what would Jesus say? What would Jesus do? What would Jesus eat? 3 things to really think about in your mind. What would he say?
Speaker 2:What would he do? What would he eat? I think he would do what we're doing. I think he'd say what we're saying. And I think we'd eat what we're what we're suggesting here was a whole unprocessed foods.
Speaker 2:And so that's financial. I don't care what religion you're coming from. Those are guidances for life. And, Muslims, Hindus, I don't care who you are. You're gonna have those kinds of deep guidances.
Speaker 2:And I I I live and breathe that every day.
Speaker 3:I don't think there's a better possible moment to close-up the podcast with that. And the Bible does mention milk 48 times. I did a little research. But, that was raw milk. That was raw milk.
Speaker 3:I saw a milk. Yeah. That could have just milk. There was no raw. There was no regenerative farming.
Speaker 3:It was just it was just, but, but yeah, that was raw.
Speaker 2:That was raw, honey, by the way.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Omar, thank you so much, ma'am. It's been great to meet you virtually. We're very excited to come out to the farm soon and get to meet you in person and build a relationship. And, I'm just really excited to see where this whole thing leads, man.
Speaker 3:So thank you.
Speaker 2:You're extremely welcome to come out. We would love for you to come out because I like I said, my heart, my mind, my soul is all dedicated to education, and you guys are doing a fantastic job with that. So good job. Meet mafia.
Speaker 3:Milk mafia.